I would get on the yacht and head for Madagascar or Mauritius, why stick around?
Likewise but Iāll sail to St Helenaā¦
Running for an island ā¦ read about that too.
Initially, island nations/countries, would be ok with foreigners/refugees.
The problem starts when local resources start to dwindle, first the officials would stop more foreigners/refugees from entering their waters/cross their borders.
As the resources dwindle to really scarce levels, chances are exceptionally good that the locals would turn on the foreigners/refugees.
Small Afrikaans community there, courtesy of the British. There are some differences in the language though. Apparently they call an airport a āvliegstasieā rather than a ālughaweā 
Vliegtuigstasie like treinstasie would probably have been more accurate. Lughawe is maybe a bit stupid. It isnāt like we call the normal hawe a seehawe.
1 Like
They didnāt even have an airport until a few years ago. Then they closed it because of hectic winds due to the mountainous around the airstrip.
They were advertising for RE engineers to go there to set up a solar grid. Sounded like the job of a lifetime. Possibly someone on the forum knows who wentā¦
Fascinating place. The British imprisoned Napoleon there, the most remote place on earth and it worked. He died there.
We probably got that from the British. Quite often, when there are differences in expression between us and the Dutch, it is because of the British influence in SA. Occasionally itās because of the Malay influence (Baie, Piesang)ā¦ which is technically the fault of the Dutch (they imported the slaves).
2 Likes
Ugh why does it feel like this yearās low PV-yields started earlier? Makes me want to slam a bunch of extra panels on my roof. Maybe even grab another MPPT to go with them.
And for the hint of prepping: I now have 10kl (2x5kl) in Jojo water storage, and a pressure vessel with pressure pump plumbed in.
Iāve spent a lot on sewage this year, due to CoCT charging you a % of your water usage for sewage and my wife watered the garden. A lot. So Iāve been thinking of getting a septic tank and going āoff-gridā with my sewage. Has anyone else tried to do this before? Know if it is allowed or even economical?
Same story this side with sewage charge of the City. We moved middle of last year to a bigger house we bought. My wife decided to take out the garden with 5 massive ākoors bomeā and redo the garden with about 120m2 of grass and palm trees, like a moerse klomp of them. We were hitting the water bill with avg of R1500 to water the new garden. I was Sh#%^@ng my self. Our avg bill at the other house was between R150 and R250 because we had wellpoint watering the garden and 2.5kl jojo tank for rain to wash the cars and panels and stuff that needs clean water.
Got hold of 3 x 250l Blue drums and drop them in to the ground for grey water system to help with watering of the garden because that water bill was killing me. Still want to get some Jojo tanks to catch rain water and build a water system for the house.
1 Like
Today, @JacoDeJongh installed a doomsday switch at my house:
I want to go as far as to say that you cannot be a contributor to this thread if you do not have a doomsday switch of your own.
3 Likes
If I install a heatpump and upgrade my Multi to the 5kVA model I also want to add a ādoomsdayā changeover.
We actually went without power once this year for 3 days, a changeover like that with a little load management could have gone a long way.
Indeed. My non-essentials already have each their own breaker: One breaker per geyser, one breaker for aircon, one for oven, one for scullery and one for pool pump.
So I can just flip down all their individual breakers, flip my doomsday switch (albeit downward) and tick up the breaker Iām willing to manage. No unexpected interference from the others.
Itās a changeover switch that moves a bunch of non-essential loads over to the essential side, so that during a long outage you can move them over to the backup side? Yeah, I know people sometimes do that with heat pumps. For myself, I donāt have the doomsday switch, but I have gas geysers for backup, and I can (and have) run the pool pump and tumble dryer off the inverter. Though I must tell you, the tumble drier really works the 3kVA, pushing it to 3.2kW for long periods. But it works, and of course in a doomsday situation, weād just hang the clothes up outside, so the pool pump really is the biggest issue, and Iām not putting in a switch for just that one item
Haha! Yeah you are correct.
So for me, geysers, oven, pool pump and aircon are the main reasons. The scullery already has one plug that is backed-up (but nothing is normally plugged into it for obviously reasons).
Actually, it isnāt so much for doomsday as it is for normal loadshedding. My area almost always shed between 10:00 and 16:00. This wastes a lot of potential PV (that would normally go to the geyser, pool pump or scullery). So that two hoursā work now needs to be picked up in bulk when loadshedding finishes. Typically roughly 3kWh I expected to buy then as the inverter canāt pick it all up. So that is roughly R7.50 per day of loadshedding. I might even pay back the switch (ignoring the utility it has for doomsday ).
1 Like
I smiled, doomsday scenario and a pool pump in the same paragraph.
With doomsday, the pool pump goes off and the pool gets covered ā¦ a source of emergency water ā¦ cause in THAT scenario, running a pool pump can attract unnecessary attention.
Been trying to work out what my level is for needing one of those.
My non-ess circuits are geyser + 2 ovens, and then I have another geyser doing its own solar heating, so they really are mostly ānon-essentialā.
Maybe if we hit level 7 load shedding then Iāll consider it, but that will be at the same time as I buy another 4 Pylons to add to my existing 4.
You are missing the point. 